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Edward the Confessor died in it.1 The chamber was 80 feet in length, 20 in breadth, and 50 in height; receiving its principal light from four windows, two at the east and two at the north. Until 1800 it was hung with tapestry, representing the Siege of Troy, when, in consequence of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland and the increased accommodation required in the House of Commons, alterations being necessary, the tapestry and wainscoting were taken down, and the interesting discovery made that the interior had been originally painted with single figures, and historical subjects from the Wars of the Maccabees and the legend of the Confessor, arranged around the chamber in a succession of subjects on six bands, somewhat similar to the Bayeux Tapestry, and on the splays and reverts of the windows. Careful drawings were made at the time by J. T. Smith, for his book on Westminster; and still more careful drawings in 1819, by Charles Stothard, since engraved in vol. vi. of the Ve.usta Monumenta, with accompanying letterpress by John Gage Rokewoode. In very early times it was the Council Chamber of the sovereign; and in it for 800 years were held the Conferences between the two Houses of Parliament. Here, "at a conference of both Houses, July 6, 1641," Waller made his celebrated speech in Parliament upon delivering the impeachment against Mr. Justice Crawley in the matter of Ship-money. Here were held, a few years later, the private sittings of the High Court of Justice for bringing Charles I. to a public trial in Westminster Hall;2 here the death-warrant of the King was signed by Cromwell, Dick Ingoldsby, and the rest of the regicides; and here the body of the unfortunate King rested till it was removed to Windsor. Here also the bodies of Lord Chatham and of William Pitt lay in state. After the destruction of the Houses of Parliament by fire in 1834 this place was fitted up by Sir Robert Smirke as a temporary House of Lords.

Painter-Stainers' Hall, No. 9 LITTLE TRINITY LANE. The Painter-Stainers' Company (the forerunners of the Royal Academy) existed as a licensed guild or fraternity as early as the 14th century, but they received their first Charter of Incorporation from Queen Elizabeth, July 19, 1580. The minutes of the Company commence in the early part of the reign of James I.; some of the entries are curious. Orders are made to compel the foreign painters then resident in London, Gentileschi, Steenwyck, etc., to pay certain fines for following their art without being free of the Painter-Stainers' Company. The fines, however, were never paid, the Court painters setting the PainterStainers in the City at defiance. Cornelius Jansen was a member, and Inigo Jones and Van Dyck occasional guests at their annual feasts.

John Browne, created Serjeant Painter to Henry VIII. by a patent dated Eltham, December 20, 1511, at a salary of 2d. a day, and four ells of cloth annually at Christmas, of the value of 6s. 8d. an ell, and elected Alderman of London, May 7, 1522, by his will dated September

1 Walcott, Memorials of Westminster, p. 210,

2 Whitelocke, ed. 1732, pp. 367, 372.

17 of that year (proved December 2, 1532) conveyed to the Guild of Paynter-Stayners, of which he was a member, his house in Trinity Lane, which after his death became the hall of the Company, and so continued till it was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.1 The present hall was designed by Sir C. Wren. It is large and well-proportioned, but ill lighted. The ceiling is ornamented with allegorical paintings by Isaac Fuller of Pallas or the Triumph of the Arts, and on the walls are many paintings. Observe. No. 21, The Fire of London, by Waggoner; engraved in Pennant's London. No. 31, Full-length of Charles II., by John Baptist Gaspars. No. 37, Full-length of the Queen of Charles II., by Huysman. No. 33, Full-length of William III., by Sir Godfrey Kneller; presented by Sir Godfrey. No. 28, Full-length of Queen Anne, by Dahl. No. 41, Magdalen, by Sebastian Franck, (small, on copper). No. 42, Camden in his dress as Clarencieux; presented to the Company by Mr. Morgan, master in 1676. Camden left £16 by will to the Painter-Stainers, to buy them a cup, upon which he directed this inscription to be put: "Gul. Camdenus, Clarencieux, filius Sampsonis, Pictoris Londinensis, dono dedit." This loving cup of the great antiquary is produced every St. Luke's Day at the annual feast of the Company. Charles Catton, one of the original members of the Royal Academy, was master of the Company, and on October 18 (St. Luke's Day), 1784, Sir Joshua Reynolds attended and was presented with the freedom of the Company.

Palace Yard (Old), an open space between the Houses of Parliament and Henry VII.'s Chapel, and so called from the Palace of our Kings at Westminster. [See Westminster.] It has been the scene of many public executions. Here, January 31, 1605-1606, Guy Fawkes, T. Winter, Rookwood, and Keyes were executed for the Gunpowder Plot. Here, on Thursday, October 29, 1618

A great and very strange scene-the last scene in the Life of Walter Raleigh. Raleigh was beheaded in Old Palace Yard: he appeared on the scaffold there about eight o'clock that morning: an immense crowd, all London, and in a sense all England looking on. A cold hoar-frosty morning. Earl of Arundel, now known to us by his Greek marbles; Earl of Doncaster ("Sardanapalus" Hay, afterwards Earl of Carlisle): these, with other Earls and dignitaries sat looking through windows near by; to whom Raleigh in his last brief, manful speech appealed, with response from them. . . . A very tragic scene. Such a man with his head grown grey, with his strong heart "breaking "--still strength enough in it to break with dignity. Somewhat proudly he laid his old grey head on the block; as if saying in better than words "There then!"-Carlyle's Cromwell.2

Here too was enacted an equally strange scene.

On the 30th of June, 1637, in Old Palace Yard, three men, gentlemen of education, of good quality, a Barrister, a Physician, and a Parish Clergyman of London, were set on three Pillories: stood openly as the scum of malefactors, for certain hours there; and then had their ears cut off,-bare knives, hot branding irons and their cheeks stamped S.L., Seditious Libeller; in the sight of a great

1 The will is printed in the Archæologia, vol. xxxix.

2 See also the account by Sir John Eliot, in his

Monarchy of Man, quoted in Forster's Eliot, vol. i. p. 34.

crowd, "silent" mainly, and looking "pale." The men were... William Prynne, Barrister: Dr. John Bastwick and the Rev. Henry Burton, Minister of Friday Street Church. Their sin was against Laud and his surplices at Allhallowtide, not against any other man or thing. Bastwick's wife on the scaffold, received his ears in her lap, and kissed him. Prynne's ears the executioner "rather sawed than cut." "Cut me, tear me," cried Prynne, "I fear thee not. I fear the fire of Hell, not thee !" The June sun had shone hot on their faces. Burton, who had discoursed eloquent religion all the while, said, when they carried him, near fainting into a house in King Street, "It is too hot to last long." Too hot indeed.—Carlyle's Cromwell, vol. i. p. 135.

Edmund Calamy died at his house in Old Palace Yard in 1732. The landing-place by which communication was kept up with the Thames was called Old Palace or Parliament Stairs.

Thus all the Way they row'd by Water,

My Eyes were still directed a'ter,

'Till they arriv'd at Palace Stairs,

The Place of Landing for our May'rs.-Hudibras Redivivus.

Palace Yard (New), the open space before the north entrance to Westminster Hall, so called from being the great court of the new palace begun by William II., of which Westminster Hall was the chief feature completed. The Clock-tower, long the distinguishing feature of New Palace Yard, was originally built, temp. Edward I., out of the fine imposed on Ralph de Hingham, Chief Justice of England. There is a capital view of it by Hollar. The great bell of the tower (Westminster Tom) was given by William III. to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's; and the metal of which it was made forms a part of the great bell of the Cathedral.

Before the Great Hall there is a large Court called the new Palace, where there is a strong tower of stone, containing a clock, which striketh on a great Bell [Great Tom of Westminster] every hour, to give notice to the Judges how the time passeth; when the wind is south-south-west, it may be heard unto any part of London, and commonly it presageth wet weather.-Howell's Londinopolis, fol. 1657, p. 378; and see Ned Ward, The London Spy, pt. 8.

The New Palace Yard being anciently inclosed with a wall, there were four gates therein; the only one at present remaining is that on the east which leads to Westminster stairs; and the three others that are demolished were that on the north which led to the Woolstaple; that on the west called Highgate (a very beautiful and stately edifice) was situate at the east end of Union Street; but it having occasioned great obstruction to the members of Parliament in their passage to and from their respective Houses, the same was taken down in the year 1706, as was also the third at the north end of St. Margaret's Lane, anno 1731, on the same account.—Maitland, ed. 1739, p. 729.

That ingeniose tractat [Harrington's Oceana], together with his and H. Nevill's smart discourses and inculcations, dayly at Coffee-houses made many Proselytes. Insomuch, that Ao. 1659, the beginning of Michaelmas time, he [Harrington] had every night a meeting at the (then) Turk's Head in the New Palace Yard, where they take water, the next house to the stairs at one Miles's, where was made purposely a large ovall-table, with a passage in the middle for Miles to deliver his coffee. About it sate his disciples, and the virtuosi. The discourses in this kind were the most ingeniose and smart that ever I heard or expect to hear, and lauded with great eagernesse: the arguments in the Parlt. House were but flatt to it. Here we had (very formally) a ballotting box, and ballotted how things should be carried by way of Tentamens. The room was every evening full as it could be crammed. Mr.

Cyriack Skinner, an ingeniose young gent., scholar to John Milton, was chaire-man. -Aubrey's Letters, vol. iii. p. 371.

The Club, called the Rota, lasted little more than a year, Harrington having been arrested and sent to the Tower in 1661. Pepys records a visit he paid to it, January 10, 1660. "To the Coffee-house, where were a great confluence of gentlemen: viz., Mr. Harrington [Sir William] Poultny, chairman, Gold, Dr. Petty [Sir William Petty, ancestor of the Marquis of Lansdowne], etc., where admirable discourse till 9 at night."

The sturdy Puritan, John Stubbs of Lincoln's Inn, and his servant Robert Page, had their right hands cut off in New Palace Yard, December 3, 1580, for a seditious libel against the Queen [Elizabeth] concerning her projected marriage with the Duke of Anjou. On March 2, 1585, William Parry, convicted of high treason, was brought from the Tower to the Palace Court, and there hanged and quartered; and in February 1587, Thomas Lovelace, condemned by the Star Chamber for libellous charges, was carried about Westminster Hall and Palace Yard, set in the pillory and had one of his ears cut off. On St. Peter's Day, 1612, Robert Creighton Lord Sanquhar was hanged in front of Westminster Hall for hiring two ruffians to murder Turner, a fencing-master, by whom he had accidentally lost an eye. Dr. Alexander Leighton, the father of Archbishop Leighton, was here publicly whipped, his ears cut off, his nose slit, branded on the face with the letters S.S. (Sower of Sedition), and afterwards made to stand in the pillory, at the instigation of Laud, November 26, 1630, for a libel on the Bishops.1 Here, March 9, 1649, the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Capel were beheaded; and here in May 1685 Titus Oates stood in the pillory and was nearly stoned to death. The last who stood in the pillory, in New Palace Yard, February 14, 1765, was Mr. John Williams, bookseller of Fleet Street, for republishing the obnoxious North Briton, but with him the exposure was rather a triumph than a punishment, he holding a sprig of laurel all the while in his hand, and receiving the acclamations of the assembled multitude, whilst opposite the pillory was suspended a jack-boot, a Scotch cap and an axe. At the expiration of the sentence the boot and cap were consigned to a bonfire that had been prepared for the purpose, and Williams was carried home in triumph in the hackney-coach "No. 45."

His Majesty fully authorises his most excellent Lord Eldon to give his consent to the House of Lords proceeding with these Bills, and in particular approves of the one for laying open Westminster Abbey to Palace Yard. Whatever makes the people more accustomed to view cathedrals must raise their veneration for the Established Church. The King will with equal pleasure consent, when it is proposed, to the purchasing and pulling down the west [south] side of Bridge Street, and the houses fronting Westminster Hall; as it will be opening to the traveller that ancient pile, which is the seat of administration of the best laws, and the most uprightly administered; and if the people really valued the religion and laws of this blessed country,

1 Only half the whipping and cutting was performed in New Palace Yard, the sentence

being completed eight days later at the pillory in Cheapside.

we should stand on a rock that no time could destroy.-King George. III. to Lord Chancellor Eldon, June 8, 1804.

Sixty years were to pass away before the improvement suggested by the good old king was effected. In 1865, as a part of the scheme of Sir Charles Barry for the completion of the Houses of Parliament the area of New Palace Yard was cleared and laid out as an open place; a covered way, or cloister, for the use of members of the two Houses, was constructed along its eastern side, and the houses on the south side of Bridge Street removed, and the whole enclosed with an iron railing, the handiwork of Skidmore of Coventry, with handsome gates by Hardman of Birmingham; the whole under the directions of Sir C. Barry, R.A. A part of the design was to decorate the enclosure with bronze statues of distinguished statesmen, but the statues of Peel, Palmerston, Derby, and Beaconsfield, are at the sides of the garden plot opposite to it, called Parliament Square. Westmacott's statue of Canning, which formerly stood there, has been removed farther west. In the residence attached to the sinecure office of Yeoman-Usher of the Exchequer, in New Palace Yard, William Godwin spent the last three years of his life, and there died, April 7, 1836, at the age of eighty years.

The

Pall Mall, a spacious street extending from the foot of ST. JAMES'S STREET to the foot of the HAYMARKET, and so called from a game of that name, somewhat similar to croquet, introduced into England in the reign of Charles I., perhaps earlier. King James I., in his Basilicon Doron, recommends it as a game that Prince Henry should use. name (Italian palamaglio, French paille maille), is given to avenues and walks in other countries, as at Utrecht in Holland. The Malls at Blois, Tours, and Lyons are mentioned by Evelyn in his Memoirs, under the year 1644.

A paille-mall is a wooden hammer set to the end of a long staffe to strike a boule with, at which game noblemen and gentlemen in France doe play much.-The French Garden for English Ladies, 8vo, 1621; and see Cotgrave, 1632.

Among all the exercises of France, I prefere none before the Paille-Maille, both because it is a gentleman-like sport, not violent, and yields good occasion and opportunity of discourse, as they walke from the one marke to the other. I marvell among many more apish and foolish toys which we have brought out of France, that we have not brought this sport also into England.-Sir Robert Dallington, A Method for Travel, 4to, 1598.

Pale Maille (Fr.) a game wherein a round bowle is with a mallet struck through a high arch of iron (standing at either end of an alley), which he that can do at the fewest blows, or at the number agreed on, wins. This game was heretofore used in the long alley near St. James's, and vulgarly called Pell-Mell.-Blount's Glossographia, ed. 1670.

It is usual to ascribe the introduction of the game, and the first formation of the Mall, to Charles II., but this is only a vulgar error. "The Pall of London" is mentioned by John King, Bishop of London, in 1613,1 and Pall Mall-but whether the game or the place is not quite clear, though it was probably the latter-by Garrard in 1637.

1 Bishop King to Carleton, February 27, 1613, Cal. State Pap., 1611-1618, p. 173.

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